Nigel Havers Movies

British director Richard Marquand graduated from BBC documentaries to dramatized features with 1979's Birth of the Beatles. This chronicle of the Fab Four begins when the group consisted of five musicians: John Lennon (Stephen MacKenna), Paul McCartney (Rod Culbertson), George Harrison (John Altman), Stu Sutcliffe (David Wilkinson), and Pete Best (Ryan Michael). The group begins its career in the dregs of a Hamburg, Germany nightclub (most of the film was made on location). Under the tutelage of manager Brian Epstein (Brian Jameson), the group sheds its rough-hewn image in favor of choirboy haircuts and Eton collars; along the way, Sutcliffe dies and drummer Best is replaced by Richard Starkey, (aka Ringo Starr, played here by Ray Ashcroft). First aired in the U.S. on November 23, 1979, Birth of the Beatles is significant as the only Beatle biopic made while John Lennon was still alive. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Nigel Havers (Chariots of Fire, Empire of the Sun) heads a five-star British cast including Kate Nicholls and Derek Godfrey, in the 1977 BBC miniseries Nicholas Nickleby, an adaptation of Charles Dickens' seminal 1838-1839 serial. The bittersweet story recounts the passing of Nickleby's (Havers) father, his subsequent impoverishment, and his guardianship under the aegis of the nasty Uncle Ralph, who shuttles Nicholas' mother off to labor in a dressmaking factory and Nicholas himself to a sadistic boarding school, run by the vile headmaster Wackford Squeers (Derek Francis). Nicholas Nickleby became one of Dickens' most beloved works, with its motley band of eccentric Brit characters, and the miniseries does its utmost to preserve the scathing satire of the original. Christopher Barry directs this five-and-a-half-hour presentation. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Liv Ullman portrays a female pope -- based on a long-held rumor that the papacy was held by a woman between the reigns of Leo IV and Benedict III -- in this rambling saga directed by Michael Anderson. The British version of the film has been cut, not only removing twenty-one minutes of the film but also an entire contemporary framing story. In the full version, a modern-day woman evangelist, played by Ullman, who feels an affinity to the legendary Pope Joan, pays a visit to her psychiatrist (Keir Dullea). Searching through her past lives to see whether she is the reincarnation of Pope Joan, the film then flashbacks 1000 years to pick up Joan (Ullman in an earlier incarnation of her character) undergoing a succession of trials and tribulations. Joan then meets up with and becomes the mistress of Adrian (Maximilian Schell), a monk with an artistic bent. After the death of Charlemagne when roving bands of Saxons are raping women and ransacking the countryside, Joan flees the country by cutting her hair short and dressing like a man. Together Joan and Adrian escape to Greece. In Greece, Joan's street-corner preaching draws the attention of Pope Leo IV (Trevor Howard), who is impressed by her impassioned rendering of the Gospel. Still disguised as a man, Pope Leo, clueless as to her true sex, hires her as his secretary. From there, she rises up the ladder of the Roman Catholic Church, becoming a cardinal and then Pope Leo's successor. But then she becomes pregnant by a lover from her past (Franco Nero) and Joan must hide her delicate condition from the papal authorities and the rowdy masses. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide